Extracurricular Reading

The guy walking across the parking lot is famous. That's easy to tell from the reactions. Crowds part for him. Security guards mirror his every step. Other cricketers who made this same trip to the locker room tiptoed around the puddles. He strides over them, head up, confident. I am following an Indian cricket superstar, but I don't know who he is. That's the kind of trip this is going to be -- one of constant confusion and mystery.

Fair warning to you. This article is long. It's also about cricket rather than soccer, football, futbol, whatever, and therefore falls outside the normal bounds of this blog. But it does sit squarely in that pocket at the intersection of sport and culture that's always been one of the major attractions of soccer for me, so I thought I'd share it here just in case you're of a similar mindset.